photo of Star Toes

Star Toes is a trinity creation that involves novel, film and original music mainly by Yao Qian, a famous musician in Taipei. The animated film Star Toes tells a love story in two cities through 24 love letters. Jingshan, a young painter, and Yin, a singer moved to Beijing and Taipei for respective realizing their dreams. Their letters to each other in almost two years constitute this love story.

As a professional in pop music, why did Yao take up film and spend three years on that? “After retirement, I started to think about what to do next. In my opinion, record profession is in dead lane, but music is still alive. What I need to do is to find my approach to continue. In my age, theatre or publication might be too hard for me. Just at that time, some young people need my support for their shooting animated film. Then I was involved.” Yao Qian answered.

Superficially, this film seems to be a love film in pure aesthetics. However, Yao Qian contributed his living experiences in Beijing and Taipei over a decade to this film production. “Actually, love in two cities is only a medium within which I write about my personal experience in Beijing and Taipei. Sometime, I spent at least one week in Beijing every month and the rest in Taipei. Consequently, I have unusual feelings for those two cities and especially I showed my feelings for Beijing when I came for the first time in the hero’s letter. As far as I know, 70 percent of people probably have similar experience in remote love, so I decided to take this topic as an interaction point. In the three years, I made the plot outline first, and then animation, novel and music. In the course of creation, the most impressive experience is living alone. As for writing this novel, I would achieve 2000 words every day and put my living in Beijing for over a decade into this novel. In the meanwhile, I would think about possibility of rendering literature into film. To be frank, I was quite frustrated after viewing the unedited film. My boss thought that my love story was too abstract to tell by means of film language. Many people just took it as a pure love story, but I don’t think in such a simple way.” Yao explained.

Beijing is also an important spring for Yao’s inspirations. “Taiwan audience will care more about friendship between women in the film. Personally speaking, I prefer the feelings conveyed in A Bite of China. In my recollection, a long time ago, I encountered Xiao Ke who told me about the date tree in his growing up. In Beijing, kids call picking up dates as “beating date tree” as date trees are special in Chinese eyes. Later I learned that there was a drama titled Date Tree. When I created original music, I searched in the streets of Beijing for those special inspirations. I complied lyric first and handed it to the composer. In his music, I can imagine willow trees along the two sides of the road in Beijing and even moving leaves on the tree. The trees seem to be talking with me, and this interesting dialogue is rendered into melody.” Yao said proudly.

Reportedly Yao’s next novel will be love stories of the middle-aged. “Many friends of mine have become single again and all of them realize the importance of friendship, fraternity and family bond. Especially without economic pressure, the middle-aged will find a way to enjoy various feelings in the limitation of life, which is just the theme of my next novel.” Yao said.